You miss him. More than the first night, more than the second, more than the fourth. So much it hurts but you can’t break free. All you can concentrate on is your breathing while the situation grips you tighter than the demons that sleep with you in bed, hugging you tighter in the morning – telling you to stay with them a little longer. The world doesn’t need you today. But it’s not like that. It’s all consuming, mind numbing, nearly paralyzing sadness. You only cried once this time, it is not the overwhelming kind of anguish that swirls itself like rising ocean tides into every corner of your being just begging to be let out. This is the dry desert heat draining you of your will and resolve. Your chest gets tighter but never tight enough to stop the breath. Your mind gets blanker staring at the same blue wall.

You swear that if he stood in the West that’s where the sun would rise. Then you remember that you’re also watching a sunset from the wrong side of the world. Now you wonder if a ball of fire in the sky wants to resign it’s position. You think that if you saw a new colour for the first time it would feel the same as when you saw him for the third, and the thirtieth, and the three-hundredth time. Then you remember that pink used to be your favourite, but now it’s blue. Now you realize it’s not the pigments that have changed, but you. You think about how when the sun sleeps you love red, but when it wakes you love lavender.

I wonder if it’s difficult for the sun to rise every morning, if he has a routine of coffee or a snooze button he allows himself to press only three times. I wonder if he knows how even though there is challenge in change, the sky is so beautiful. And I wonder if he’s still lovers with the moon, or do we only have the night because they grew apart. Is it awkward for him to see her in the sky sometimes before he’s settled for the night? Does he choose the colours he paints the sky with every night?

I wonder if he’s sleeping angry when he set’s bright red. I wonder if he misses her when he wakes up tangerine.

I worry for the moon, carrying around the weight of the tides. I wonder how she got tied down and if she’s just strong or determined. I worry for all the blame we put on her for our grievances when she’s full, if she’s ever confessed to such mischief or simply never denied the accusations. I wonder if she is vying for the sun’s affections with every wax and wane, trying to please his appetite.

I worry the stars are too far away to be friends.I worry she can’t see her reflection in the ocean.

You miss him. At 11PM when he’s laying beside you and you wait too long after eating ice cream to kiss him with a cold mouth, because somehow that means “I love you” without having to say it. You miss him when he’s lost in his thoughts or when you’re lost in yours and the only good thing is that you get the missing in now. You’re begging the universe that you won’t have to too much in the future. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you miss him the most right before he tells you he has to leave at 6:30AM to move the care because even though nothing changes your mouth is now warm, and wet, and lonely and you’re forgetting what it’s like to have his words melting on your tongue. Even though you swore everything he said was tattooed on the inside of your cheek. You miss him when the bed is empty and warm.

This is not a poem, or a novel, or a song. I don’t know what it is but it is none of those things.

What this is, though, is a collection. A collection of explanation, and occasionally some apologies.

Like how I am sorry that when I am with you I often can’t speak because the words in my mind don’t come out as smoothly as they are thought, and how my tongue trips over them. They are prisoners running and running and slamming hard into my teeth; getting caught. And when I kiss you I’m trying to release them and I hope that these words run through your bloodstream and that you understand and when I bite your lip I’m trying to get the residue of the vowels out of my mouth before they become to sweet and let me rot.

When you question me for how I look at you and I tell you it’s nothing, follow your gut. You know what I’m thinking. I’m sorry I lie. I can’t handle the truth. You know what I’m thinking. I’m afraid it’s too much, that it will come down like a tidal wave and we will not be strong enough breakers. I’m sorry I’m not afraid to feel but that I am afraid to speak. I’m sorry there is any fear in me at all, and if I can console any hurt let it be that I also feel safe. With you.

For every time I pick a fight, know I am picking you. For every time I am short on words, on breath, on life – understand that I sing to the fucking moon every night you are not with me hoping that one day I will make it up to you because I am not lacking in determination what I am lacking in courage.

And while the moon is encouraging others, I praise every cloud that crosses the sky because I don’t want you to see me for what I am, and I am jealous of every ray of light that gets to touch you in place I cannot, when I cannot. And it’s so sadistic that I love that you’re broken but the thing is I don’t think you’ll cut me up. Despite your warning label you’ve been an emollient to yourself and your rough edges have been smoothed out. I want to drink you up like too much of a good thing, I think that would be the best way to go.

When I wake up in the morning I don’t think about how lucky I am. I don’t think about how handsome you are or that I want to touch your hip. I think about how soft your eyes feel on mine and how this is the one thing I never dreamed of and the one thing I never want to lose.

We make love with loud laughter and morning voices. With arcane apologies and face-cupped sleeps. We make love with our eyes dancing to meet each other across a crowded room and playing piano keys with my fingers while our hands are embraced. Every ache I have for you adds to it an increment, and I find that my fantasies are just adventures I want to go on with you to find more things to add to our trail mix of memories. I still need the stars because I need to do everything on earth with you and then some, but know that you’re the only reason I need anything more than you. We are enough – all the poems of other peoples dreams and realities in a concentrated cough syrup to soothe the aches I have for you. We don’t have to touch but we make love and I will embezzle your attention to make a currency in aureate messages just to buy it back again. Whenever I am reminded of you, we make love and I’ll find you everywhere -in everything- just to do it again.

There’s a trail tattooed on your skin where my fingers have ventured over your shoulder and across your collar bone. I want to travel your body, write my own map. Follow your bread crumb trail of sun spots splattered on your back, guided by the North Star freckles on your right arm. I want to know every story of every scar as deeply as if they were a river I could swim in, I want to conquer every peak of your body over and over again. I want to feel at home on your mouth, know I’m welcome when the bells of my name from your voice toll. I want to be the light that spreads in the darkness of your heart in the cave that is your ribcage. I want to breathe in every stalagmite of smoke that leaves your lungs and tell love stories to the moon in your eyes. The arches of your feet are valleys I want to sleep in and I want to press every wild flower I see in the crevices that your joints make into a dictionary of words that don’t yet exist that are the explanation of how my tongue feels on your teeth. There’s a trail tattooed on your skin that my fingers will never stop treading.

(I came, I saw, I conquered)

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